


Personal Burial

by Leoporidae_Lagomorpha



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Depression, Gen, Guilt, Introspection, Sabo POV, Sabo hates himself over Ace's death and Koala is there to stop him from being a pitiful idiot, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 12:29:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leoporidae_Lagomorpha/pseuds/Leoporidae_Lagomorpha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day his brother died, Sabo felt as though he was being crushed under the weight of the sky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personal Burial

**Author's Note:**

> I was suddenly overcome with feelings about Marineford. So here's a fic about Sabo dealing with Ace's death.

_His end came in black ink and off-white paper._

The infamous Fire Fist had been executed, or at least that's what the front page of the newspaper said, before he'd crumpled it in his fist. He wanted to go, wished that he could tear away the miles that separated them like so many ink stained pages. Sabo had wanted nothing more than to rush Marineford, to burn down their ships and their towers, to destroy them for the murder they called just. Reason held him back, stopped him from running to answer the call of his blood like a crackling storm and it hurt, it ripped him apart inside.The distance between where he was and where he wanted to be was measured in pain and not in leagues.

He hadn't slept in a week, not since the execution had been announced. How could he? Knowing that Ace, his brother, was sentenced to die. So he'd worked and trained and and waited desperately for more information, till it was too late. His brother was dead and he was to blame. He hadn't been strong enough, not to yet, he hadn't been fast enough, or smart enough to find some way to save him, hadn't really deserved to call Ace his brother in the end.

\----

Ace had died a pirate.

Sabo had only ever known him as a child, but he supposes that it's something you're born with, something in your being, a predisposition to the life you're meant to lead. Ace and Luffy, now those two, they were meant to sail the seas. They were souls who sought the thrill of adventure and the glory that was hidden under crashing waves. It had never been that way for him, he'd never wanted to conquer. No, he wasn't meant to rule the world, he was born to change it. What he'd dreamed of was a better world, a world where he could stand by his brothers without shame. One that Ace never lived to see. Sabo isn't a pirate and he could never be, he's a revolutionary.

\----

He'd tossed the tattered remains of the day's news to the ground, gut churning with disgust and regret and wandered blindly to the terrace, where he'd taken a seat on the cold stone parapet, legs dangling over the unforgiving waters that foamed far beneath.

He ran tired trembling fingers through his wavy blond hair, over the length of the scar that marred his eye and down to clutch at his pounding heart. There was a hollowness he'd never felt before. An emptiness, as though the life inside him had been sucked away, leaving nothing but a cage of brittle bones and a heart as heavy as lead. What he felt couldn't simply be physical exhaustion, this was more than mere tiredness, this was as if his mind was unable to process anything except for the fact that Portgas D. Ace was dead.

\----

He wonders what Ace looked like. Some brat he once knew, who like him, had grown into a man. A fine man he'd seemed to be and Sabo couldn't help, but feel proud every time he'd seen his brother's bounty rise. He'd seen the wanted posters of course, but those things never captured the patterns of his freckles just right. He'd liked to have seen him once, just once, with his very own eyes.

He wanted to know if Ace smiled. If he _really_ smiled. If he could at all. Sabo remembers him as a child, violent, angry, hurt and lashing out at a world that only seemed to want to do him harm. A demon, they'd called him back then, shunned for his blood. Sabo himself understood a bit about shame, or at least about wishing you hadn't been born. It was easy companionship at the beginning, friendship that came from shared mischief.

Luffy's arrival turned their lives upside down. Luffy always tends to do that actually. He just burst into your life with no regard, this hurricane, bringing with him monumental change.

They were brothers now.

Not bound by blood, but in spirit. The oath they swore on old sake cups. No doubt long gone by now. That was a bond forged in fire. They own parts of each other, in peculiar ways, _nakama ways_.

\----

Lost in old memories, he hardly notices when Koala hops up and takes a seat beside him. She's watching him out of the corner of her eye. He doesn't have to tell her, Koala knows of loss in intimate ways only those who've experienced great tragedy ever know. He doesn't have to tell her, but she still asks anyway.

"Who were they?"

 _Were_ , such a definite way of saying it, but then again, Koala's alway been that way. It's funny to think in terms of the past tense, because only yesterday Ace was breathing, now he'd only ever breathed.

"He was a pirate." Sabo answers, gaze turning to look back out to sea.

He used to glance at the rocking waves and comfort himself in the knowledge that no matter where he was, Ace was undoubtedly looking at the same blue waters. That they were both living by the same currents under the same sky, but on this cloudy morning, the ocean never seemed harsher to him. It's almost as if the fire inside him died out along with Ace's flame.

"I'm not asking about any of that." She says quietly. "Who was he to you?"

Sabo's not sure how he wants to respond, caught off guard the words seem to stick in his throat.

"He was..." Ace was a lot of things. There are too many words to say and not enough time for him to even adequately describe exactly what Ace meant to him.

"He was...my first true friend, my brother in fact, my first real family."

\----

He loved Ace like he loved Luffy, wonders if they'd still love him even if they found out how he'd betrayed them. If they'd refuse him and cling to his memory. He wonders if it would have, could have hurt. He'd have accepted it all the same.

They almost met once, almost crossed paths on a busy street. Sabo had only noticed when the bright orange cowboy hat was already far away, when it was already much too late. He'd cursed himself and his own cowardice for hiding away, for slinking into the shadows instead of running down that street towards that bright orange beacon of colour that shone through a sea of dull greys and dark browns. He'd been dreadfully tempted, horribly so. He'd been afraid in the end, uncertain and undecided, he'd pulled his cloak a little tighter around his shoulders and walked away.

That night he'd prayed. For the very first time since he'd died, Sabo knelt on the uneven floor of his temporary lodgings and clasped his hands together to recite a hymn he'd never learned. He didn't believe in God. How could there be God? In a world like this. He didn't believe, but he needed faith, in himself, in his choice, in his fate. So he prayed for his brothers, and his own sinner's soul. He'd muttered words he hadn't even dared to think, he'd spilled his heart in that tiny room surrounded by dust moats and the moon's shimmering light. He was ashamed, so that night, on his knees, Sabo asked his make-believe deity for some confidence.

If they ever answered, it was not one he received.

\----

"Did you love him?" She asks.

"More than anything." He told her. It feels like an understatement hanging from his lips.

"Then that's all that matters." Koala replies. "If you loved him and he loved you, then there's nothing more you can do." She says it with the certainty of someone who's had to watch others die, with the battle weary sigh of someone who's had years to come to terms with the gaping hole left in their reality.

Koala extends a hand. He looks at her surprised. She gives him a look that says, this is for the best, so he takes a hold of her fingers with his own. It's a small hand, far from delicate though with the calluses you can only earn from hard work. These hands are the hands of someone who's fought for their freedom and payed the price. He takes clasps her small hand in his own. His fingers are numb, from the shock or the cold, he'll never know.

"I could have...no...should have saved him." He confesses, ripping the scab off the still festering wound of his heart.

"Do you really think you could have made a difference?" She's looking at him now, reading his eyes for any lies he might tell.

"I don't know, but I should have tried." Sabo doesn't know if he could have saved him. Luffy failed in the end and it pains him to think of how it must have felt. He wonders if he'd been there what would have changed. If Ace would've been grinning at his side and not from somewhere up above.

"And if all of you had died?"

That question stings like a hard slap. It makes his teeth clench and his jaw ache.

"You're alive and so is the revolution don't go wishing your life away." She's right. She usually is, that Koala. She's smart, but then again most of the army is. She's been through hell, he reminds himself. She's kind though, kinder than what he deserves.

She pretends not to notice as he grip her hand and cries. He cries all the tears for the fact that Ace died, for the fact he was alive and the fact Luffy had to fail even though he'd tried. He cries great blobby tears of someone who hasn't done so in a long time, his nose dripping and his eyes watery, Sabo cries.

"Is it ever alright?" He hiccups between rattling sobs.

"You'll survive." She tells him, fingers still interlaced.

It might not be okay and it may never be alright, but he'll survive. If he can do it once, he can do it again. Surviving is what he does after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, I'm not super familiar with Sabo's character. He's still so mysterious, but I hope I did okay with my first attempt at writing him.


End file.
